Rebel Rubbish

I've done another set of songs on Guitar Smith, and (for a change) completed a full set of songs and did the associated gig.
Rebel Rebel by David Bowie was one I was really looking forward to doing. I earned enough points to qualify the first time around, which is both a bonus and a shame. The bonus was I only played it once, instead of dozens of times! When I came to play this in the gig, I really messed up the opening half of the song, and as you can't restart a gig performance, I didn't get much appreciation from the virtual audience.
Mean Bitch by Toddy Porter. I really struggled with this song, although I did manage to beat the qualifier with better than 5000 points over the target. I doubt this will be a favorite of mine to play!
I Miss You by Incubus. I did play it, but can't think of how I felt about playing it at all.
Do You Remember by the Horrors. This was another challenging song for me to play, and I felt almost totally inept while playing it, but the virtual audience seemed to appreciate it.
High and Dry by Radiohead. Yes, another challenging song. The least said about how I played it the better.

The next set

I didn't make a note of the next set of songs, and have done this blog entry from memory. I have been noting down for my previous blogs how I felt as I competed each song. I think that is probably the better way to do it, but means you will have more to plough through.
Instead of playing each song until I qualify, I played through in the order that Guitar Smith wanted. This gave more variety in what I was playing, and I suspect prevented me getting fed up with not making progress. At least until the two I was really struggling with!
Guitar Smith recommends that you use the practice the techniques involved in the songs, and I have been ignoring that up to now. I'm considering actually doing the practice work before rehearsing the songs to see if it will improve and reduce the time it is taking me to qualify.
I'm getting curious what will happen in the game once I get through all the songs at the qualification level. I am hoping that there will be a harder qualifier with the songs if that happens.
I have been focussing on doing coursework for a Coursera online course I have been following this week, and have only picked the guitar up to practice some very basic tunes from the book I have been following.
I have done something different though, tonight I had a go at playing a simplified tab of The House Of The Rising Sun, and have recorded and uploaded the guitar work to SoundCloud. If you're interested, you can find it here. If you're not interested the link to follow is this one.

Local Support Act

I've just completed the next set of songs, and got my rating raised to "Local Support Act". I hope they mean that it is just for people in your living room though.

The songs in this set were
I Got Mine by The Black Keys, Me and the Bean by Spool, When I'm with you by Best Coast and Song 2 by Blur.
When I'm with you took a significant number of attempts to get my playing up to the target standard. I'm still refusing to accept dropping the qualification level. I kept gaining and losing levels as I was going through the songs, so consistency is something I need to work on.

Song 2

When it came to Song 2 I was expecting to spend weeks trying to get the 50,600 points needed to qualify. But I managed it first time through. Being totally honest, what I was playing sounded totally naff and not at all how I remember Blur playing it.
The only reason I can think of is there are long strings of repeated notes and I managed to get large parts of them accurately enough to gain the points required to qualify.

The Gig

This is my opportunity to wow the virtual audience. The first two songs, I Got Mine and Me and the Bean,  I totally bombed, I'm not sure if any of the avatars walked out, but I would have.

I did manage to wow the crowd with When I'm With You and Song 2. I didn't get Song 2 to sound much closer to the original, but did improve on playing a couple of the sections.

And now I'm a Local Support Act. I certainly don't feel like it, and suspect I have excessively high standards but that is probably the best way.

Tonight I'm hoping to get to the Ketton Ox in Yarm to catch an Acoustic Evening. The snow seems to be melting nicely, so fingers crossed.  The only downside is that I'll not get home until past midnight, and I have a 6am get up for work in the morning. Oh, and I've got an assessment in the morning. Perhaps going to the Ketton Ox isn't such a wise idea...

Mixing Desk

I've treated myself to a mixing desk as a combined Christmas and Birthday present to myself. The plan is that I will use it to record some of the songs I'm learning, both from the Guitar Smith program and from other sources I am (trying to) learn from.
There will be some singing involved too, mainly from me so be afraid, very afraid.
Lynn and I will be recording some songs under our Heron Hymn brand. The singing in that will be much better, but that's mainly because it will be Lynn singing and not so much me. As long as I am driving the desk, I can make sure of that (but don't tell Lynn!)

Qualified!

I've qualified with Play with Fire, finally, so I got to do a gig on the game.

The Muse track is still a challenging one to play, I don't think I would have qualified although I haven't played it for a few days now. If I was to learn to play this properly, I think I'd have to practice it frequently to keep the song playable for me.

I still like Jenny O's Well Ok Honey, and would have had enough points to qualify so I'm quite pleased with that. I did mess up a few times during the playing though.

Thinking about it, it might be worth the effort to play each song again two or three times to get the feeling for the song back before doing the gig, that might improve my RSP.

The new songlist is:
I Got Mine by The Black Keys qualify at 12,100.
Me and the Bean by Spool, qualify at 31,500.
When I'm with you by Best Coast qualift at 31,100.
Song 2 by Blur qualify at 50,600. I did notice something: the qualification score for this song has suddenly jumped!

I have two ideas about learning and playing these. One is to play in the order they give you until you qualify, the other was to play through them once, and then focus on the most difficult until you qualify and then do the next most difficult and so on.

I Got Mine

I scored 10,104 at the first attempt and the song introduced E7 and A. Second attempt at the song I got 14,578 so qualified nicely with that song. 

Me and the Bean

First attempt I got around 18,000 points which is a nice start. The game locked up after the third attempt at the song, and when the game was restarted I scored 35,319 which is nicely over the qualification level. I've played this one about half a dozen times.

When I'm With You

This song is more challenging, mainly with the shifts up and down the fretboard from 3rd to 12th fret. I earned 24,222 at my first attempt.

The E 'power' chord is introduced in the song.

I stopped playing after about an hour and a half on this session, mainly because my wrist was starting to ache and my shoulder was feeling uncomfortable. 

If anybody wants to donate an electric guitar, I'd appreciate it: I am playing on a Fender electro-acoustic guitar at the moment and the body is fairly wide compared to a pure electric guitar.

Play with fire

Play with Fire

The Rolling Stones

I like the lyrics in this song, it's about a high society girl that ends up with a working class lifestyle.

There is a G - D chord transition that is causing me difficulty at the moment, but the main problem I am having is processing new notes at the same time as playing. The first sight of a new pattern causes me much more problem than playing something I have played a few times. Perhaps it is muscle memory starting to kick in?

There is an Em chord that appears every now and again, but I am not playing consistently well enough to have it stay in my score.

I'd only spent around 40 minutes playing last night, but mainly because I was busy with an electronic circuit to simulate the sound of rain. Annoyingly it doesn't work correctly, so I'm a little peeved with it.

Unlocked Scale Runner

Well Ok Honey

I've (finally) managed to get enough points to qualify for this song, so get to move onto the next one in the sequence. I got 26,028 points so that nicely got me above the threshold for qualifying.

I still like the song, and intend to buy the Home album when I get some spare money.

Play With Fire

I'm not going to say that I like all Rolling Stones songs, because I don't think I have heard all of them. What I will say is I like the ones I have heard.

This one added two new chords, G and Em. I am not near getting enough points for this song to qualify, the best I have managed is around 19k, and need 22,200 to qualify.

Of course, when I do qualify, that is the third one in a set and I get to play all three in a performance. Thankfully still in my living room, and not in front of a real audience.

Scale Runner

Another of the mini games that Guitar Smith includes, and I managed to unlock it when I qualified with Well Ok Honey.

You get to chose the scale you want to practice, and have to play the scale and get your character to jump from note to note. As you get better, the game gets faster and changes from a simple up and down the scale to playing parts of the scale.

I've only played this one three times, I've had the guitar out for two hours and have other things that I really need to be doing.

Can I be getting addicted to the game (or to playing the guitar), because the first thing I did when got up  was to pick the guitar up and start playing, instead of booting up the computer.

Well Ok, Honey

Well Ok Honey

This song is by Jenny O on her Home album.

This is a nice quirky song that I am enjoying trying to play. I like the lyrics and the light, bouncy feel to the song. I'd love to see her live, but she's LA based I think and it's a bit far to travel for a gig.

I've been trying to play this track for around 4 hours, and was within around 100 points of qualifying when my playing went to pieces. Probably not helped by a glass of red.

I'm enjoying the tune enough that I've spent a little time looking at her website http://jennyo.com and have subscribed to her twitter feed and liked her page on Facebook  When I get some spare money I think I'll probably buy her Home CD too.

I'm tempted to see if the guitarsmith will cope with me sticking my mixing desk between the guitar and the PS3, and taking a feed to record what I'm playing on the laptop. I have a suspicion that it won't sound anything like the guitar that I hear over the game though. I might be able to set it up so that Lynn can sing along and have that recorded alongside the lousy guitar playing ;-)  If that happens, keep an eye on Soundcloud as we might put our embarrassment for the world to see. That might persuade Angie that she doesn't really want us to get up at one of her open mic nights!

We did discover that the plugging a usb microphone into the PS will give the singer feedback on how well they are singing. Lynn got more compliments from the software than I got. You don't get extra points for having a vocalist when learning, and we couldn't find an option to have the game use the microphone on two player mode. I suppose it makes sense, as it is for helping to learn to play the guitar.

Perhaps another release (or an entirely new game) could be something along the lines of a full band version, accepting electronic drums as well as a vocalist to help with the guitar and bass that guitarsmith currently accepts. So learning to drum, play lead, rhythm, bass guitar and sing. Is a TV big enough to show all of the band parts at the same time?

My plan to start having sensible bedtimes hasn’t been successful, it's rapidly approaching midnight again.

How close am I to qualifiying? My best was about 24,500 points, but I'm getting between 20k and 22k at the moment. The qualifier is just under 25k points. So it's close, but no cigar. Perhaps I'll manage tomorrow – and then another song to try to learn something new.

Introduction

About 18 months ago I bought myself a guitar with the intention of learning to play.
Apart from an initial burst of enthusiasm, it has mainly been left gathering dust. Or at least until about six months ago when I started playing it a little more. Even once a week was more than I was playing in the past!
I had seen adverts about Rocksmith, and thought it would be a good way to learn, so it was stuck on my wishlist and I was bought a copy by my parents.
It took me nearly a week to get around to installing and plugging the guitar in,
My verdict? It's frustrating as anything, but I am enjoying it quite a lot.
I have just progressed from the beginner stage to "New Act" which sounds more exciting than it really is.

Gameplay

The basic idea is that you follow the notes on screen and as you improve the game gives you more challenging notes to play. This came as quite a surprise to me the first few times it happened, and was even worse as the game decided it was time to play chords. I'll not repeat what I said the first time it happened, and I totally sucked at getting my fingers in the right place to get the chord with enough time to play it.
There are sections of the game aimed at helping you with techniques, and chords are included in that. It shows you the individual notes (and insists that you actually play them) before playing the full chord.

Sidegames

I have unlocked three of the sidegames that come with it: Ducks, Super Ducks and Big Swing Baseball. They ok, but not my reason for the game.

Songs

There are a wide range of rock songs included as part of the game, and you start at a practice session and when you achieve a high enough score you progress to play a gig at a venue. 

If you play well enough then you get to play another song (or two) as an encore and earn more RSP.